Two new books are sitting on my desk, and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

One is by Aaron Klein, a young journalist who made aliyah from the U.S. and it catalogues a litany of woes facing Israel. Its title: “The Late Great State of Israel: How Enemies Within and Without Threaten the Jewish Nation’s Survival.”

Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent for The Atlantic, has a provocative piece in the July/August issue of the magazine, entitled “How Iran Could Save The Middle East.”

His thesis, well worth considering, is that based on the Mideast cliché, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” key states in the region like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt could form an alliance with Israel based on their common opposition to and fear of Iran, especially a nuclear Iran.

One of the most disturbing aspects of a controversy we covered this week never made it into the story, due to constraints of deadlines and space.

The report was about a prominent Orthodox rabbi’s alleged statements suggesting that it is permissible to cheat on one’s tax return, presumably because Jews only have to be honest in their halachic dealings, and not necessarily in activities outside of that universe.

It may seem churlish, in the wake of President Obama’s lofty speech to the Muslim world yesterday, to note that despite his references to “Palestine,” there is no such entity.

There is the Palestinian Authority, of course, whose president is Mahmoud Abbas, and there is the belief, shared by many, that its goal is the creation of a Palestinian state, though its actions in recent years indicate otherwise.

It seems that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is worried that the U.S. can’t be trusted.

“In the past 29 years, different U.S. administrations have opposed the people of Iran,” he said on Sunday. In fact succeeding American presidents have gone out of their way to say their beef is with the rulers of Iran, not the citizens.